10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)

This is a sort of related movie to Cloverfield, a movie that was so good, they talked about a sequel for years and now, nine years later, we're only getting the first tangentially-related thing to it. Nine years! That must mean this is just that much better for all that time, right? Oh yeah, and there are spoilers in this, by the way. I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I accidentally spoiled the movie for you. No, literally. I'd have to impale myself on a sword, Seppuku-style, if I spoiled this one for you.

Director: Dan Trachtenberg

Starring: John Goodman, Mary Elizabeth Winstead

IMDb

The movie starts with Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Michelle, a young white woman who is in a fight with her boyfriend when she's run off the road by a car. The voice of the boyfriend, by the way, is provided by Bradley Cooper of all people. I'm sure this will be a role he will look back on with misty eyes in his old age and go, yes, that was my best work ever.

She wakes up chained to a radiator in a dirty basement, which is obviously immediately distressing, and also same as the beginning of the Oscar-nominated drama from 2015, “Room.” That is a comparison I am sure the rest of the movie will no doubt keep making, and from here on out, I will only like this movie if and when it reminds me of the Oscar-nominated 2015 drama "Room." Anything else is lesser and I will throw it in the proverbial incinerator.

She spends a few minutes trying to get her cell phone from across the room and does so by breaking the IV tube she's hooked up to and using the pole to grab it. She does get the phone, and it's also incredibly lucky she didn't really need that IV tube thing for medical reasons or whatever. Seriously, she's pretty much fine afterward. Her leg is also in a cast and she's told to get used to walking on crutches, but we see she walks pretty good even with the supposed injured leg... not sure why THAT was in the story at all...

But I digress. Like in every horror film ever made, there's no cell signal when she grabs the phone. Of course there isn't. You're in a dark basement hole that looks like a pedophile's wet dream. What do you expect? Did you think he'd just have really good, full-bar cell service in that fucking nightmare dungeon?

"Goddamn Sprint!"

John Goodman comes in after that, playing a character called Howard, who is the guy who trapped her there. He says he saved her and she should be grateful to him because of that. No mention of how he chained her to a pipe for no damn reason, huh? That's never really addressed. We see later he has a perfectly nice upstairs area with a couch that could have convinced her she WASN'T some kind of kidnapped sex slave in a rape dungeon and made the whole thing go smoother. But I guess he just likes making things purposefully difficult!

To make things even more unclear, creepy and rape-y, she tries to escape and then Howard grabs her by the throat and sticks her with a syringe full of something that makes her pass out. He doesn't offered any real explanation for any of this, which is totally normal and not a hackneyed screenwriting device to make the movie go on longer. Why doesn't he just tell her what's wrong and prove it? Sure, she might be skeptical, but that would still be better than her thinking you're about to make her a sex slave or something. He eventually caves into the boredom of actually explaining things like a functioning human being, and tells her the world has ended. Ya know. The rational explanation.

The movie does get better after that. I'll admit. There's this other guy in the bunker with them, Emmett, who acts as a pretty good decent tolerable eh-we'll-go-with-it comic relief, and some nice scenes where you don't quite know where the film's going yet – some decent paranoia and world-building that work because you've seen so little of it. The uncertainty over Howard's motives and whether he's crazy or the world really has ended make this a pretty decent suspense sequence. And you get some good tension out of these scenes. So I will throw everyone else a bone and admit these parts of the movie were pretty cool. And I liked the scene where they hear someone outside and it turns out to be a woman with her face melting. That was pretty wholesome family fun.

There's also at least an attempt at character development with Howard talking about his daughter and how he lost her – John Goodman really sells that scene and it works; good scene. The rest of the character development doesn't fare that well, though. Like you get Emmett moaning about how he wanted to go to college but was too scared he'd be perceived as dumb, so he didn't go. It's really quite hammy, lame dialogue and just slows the movie down. And he should've saved it for his therapist, if his therapist is still alive in this nuclear future. If she isn't, well, she'll probably wish she was after listening to this idiotic sob story from a man-child like this guy. I know that sounds harsh, but hey, it's a fictional character. Who cares?

Michelle's isn't much better – she talks about how one time, she saw a kid being abused in public and did nothing. Truly she is the victim here and the real one we should feel sorry for!

If this all seems too routine and standard for you, don't worry: there is one scene where they turn on some silly pop music and have a montage of them playing board games. I must have missed the cut where this transformed into a commercial from the early 90s for a game like Monopoly or Clue!

Buy Candyland at your local K-Mart today!

Then they have a scene where they talk about missing pieces of a puzzle they're trying to build, so now you know the conflict is really heating up in there! I'm on the edge of my seat!

Things go topsy turvy again when the writers hit a dead end in the script, and so we get Michelle going up to another part of the bunker and finding out that there's HELP scrawled in the glass with blood on it, plus an earring that the other guy recognizes as that of a girl who went missing a few years ago. So it's pretty much set in stone – Howard may have built a fallout shelter that could survive the end of society, but he's still a perverted killer who kidnaps young girls. I'm really surprised at that given that his method of accommodating car crash victims is to chain them up in his basement and not explain anything about why they're there. Oh, wait, no I'm not.

After this, Howard turns into a completely different character – he's suddenly totally unsympathetic, and there turns out to be no doubt that he is in fact a monster. They try to plan to escape, but he finds out and kills the one guy. The movie turns into a slasher movie then as Michelle tries to escape and he starts chasing her like Jason Voorhees. She dumps acid on him and escapes through an air vent, but – uh oh! - he chases her and starts stabbing through the air vent like, again, a slasher movie.

Somehow, he keeps surviving, even after she dumped acid on his face. She does eventually kill him by blowing up the entire bunker, which is like killing a fly by shooting up your room with an AK-47. You know what they say about kidnapping and killing high school girls – it gives you invincibility powers. Man, my friends and I really were off the ball when we played superheroes as kids. This movie has it right.

So, yeah, she escapes to find out that the air is not poisonous like Howard had been telling them. Instead, a giant alien monster flying overhead sees her and starts to chase her. This results in a completely perfunctory supernatural alien chase scene tacked onto the end of their kidnapping underground end of the world movie, which fits in like a square peg in a round hole. I get that it's a Cloverfield movie, so it involves aliens, but the way this is done just feels half-assed.

And, it's full of just flat out weak-ass moments like when she sets off a car alarm by accident, so, whoopsy-daisy on that one! Or the other time when she finally kills the thing by lighting a bottle of alcohol on fire and throwing it at the monster. All of these things are ultimately just tired, cliche crap and don't provide any heart pounding excitement in what should be the movie's "big scene." I really think this sequence should've been extended and introduced way earlier in the movie. Maybe we could've gotten some good scenes if the thing had met (and maybe killed) Howard.

That means there's a definite hierarchy of power here: the bloated fat country bumpkin with a paranoid conspiracy end-of-world bunker was WAAAAY harder to defeat than the UFO monster that's ten times Michelle's size. But she beat them both! So it's a feminist statement, which means I am officially allowed to like the movie now.

This movie isn't terrible or anything, but it's half-assed, and there are too many lame things in it for me to say I enjoyed it that much. It was pleasant at times and had a few moments of good suspense. John Goodman and Mary Elizabeth Winstead were both good in their roles, though Winstead was kind of wasted – she was a sort of generic character and could've been any young, fit looking actress and the movie would be no different. But she was OK.

Honestly, though, the tired and played out arc of the mystery surrounding Goodman's Howard character just made this so lame to me at times. He was about as mysterious as a fucking report card spelling everything out very clearly. And that was a great metaphor, as great as the pyramids of Egypt. I mean, sure, there were some moments in the first act where it SEEMED like the film was going some other way, but then in the end, it played out exactly like I thought it would; he was evil and that was it. Totally boring.

The sci-fi twist at the end could have been good, I guess, but it just feels like it was rushed and after-the-fact. Why should I care about anything that happens during that sequence? I already sat through the movie's main conflict. If killing an aging John Goodman is harder than killing the badass alien thing you put in at the end of your movie, then you're doing it wrong and you need to go back to the drawing board.

Overall, not the worst ever, and I do appreciate the attempt to create a new world and mythology of these characters rather than just remake something old. But Cloverfield just isn't selling me yet that it deserves to be a franchise with multiple movies.

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REVIEW: Fallen (1998)

There’s always a charm to movies like this. Fallen is a 1990s thriller movie starring Denzel Washington and John Goodman; isn’t that a kick-ass cast?

Director: Gregory Holblitt

Starring: Denzel Washington, John Goodman

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119099/

This is easily one of the better Denzel Washington movies, in which he plays a cocky detective who ends up on the trail of a body-jumping demon called Azazel. This is just one of those great bare-bones detective thrillers with a premise that is original enough to stand out without trying too hard to be anything it isn’t. All the tropes you would expect are in this movie – you have the stoic and serious main character slipping to the dark side. You have the hesitant and mysterious female lead who slowly opens up to the main character. You have a little kid character, in this case Washington’s nephew. You have a stern boss and a concerned sidekick character – the latter is Goodman’s role here.

The difference with Fallen is the quality with which it is executed and the great atmosphere it exudes. The pacing is really good and keeps you on the edge of your seat the whole time. There are no real unexpected twists, and yet the story is told in such a way that you want to see what happens next anyway – that is an impressive feat. The events that transpire are carried out with a real seriousness and weight that make them compelling. It’s surprising how credible they make a body-jumping Biblical demon seem, too, and it never comes off as corny or anything. The scenes where you can’t quite tell who Azazel has possessed are the best ones in the film. Creepy and atmospheric, keeping you guessing.

Speaking of atmosphere, a word I have bandied about quite a lot already, this film is flooded with it – I especially like the use of the Rolling Stones song as a constant motif throughout. I don’t really know how Azazel knows a Rolling Stones song. But it works as a suitably eerie repeating theme throughout the film. And hearing John Goodman sing it at the end…that’s just great, man. A lot of the movie is set in crowded, urbanized city streets in the wintertime, which is good because the wintry setting bespeaks a cold, frigid feel, and the crowded and urban setting makes Azazel’s people-jumping skills all the more confusing and disorienting. It’s like he has a whole flock of unsuspecting, helpless chickens to feed on.

So Fallen is a kick ass thriller. It’s well written, well acted and professionally executed, with flair and style. There’s nothing about this movie that really speaks out as something transcendent of its genre, but sometimes all you need is a good, solid B-grade movie in the genre. Fallen adheres perfectly well to all the clichés of the detective thriller genre, and does them all beautifully.

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The Artist (2011)

Starring: Jean Dujardin, Berenice Bejo

Director: Michel Hazanavicius

IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1655442/

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Artist_(film)

"Why won't you speak?!"

Starting off in 1927, the movie is about George Valentin (Jean Dujardin), a silent film star who is at the top of his career. He fascinates audiences with his great cinematic exploits and charms a young aspiring actress named Peppy Miller (Berenice Bejo). But the good life begins to fade when the new "talkies" emerge, making his style appear obsolete. George fights to stay relevant but soon realizes that he is facing the end of an era. Is it the end of him, too?

This film is great entertainment. Director Michel Hazanavicius has stated that this modern black and white silent picture was supposed to be a love letter to cinema, and it clearly shows. He is obviously a big fan of Really Old Hollywood: while I have only seen a limited number of films from that time period, I have seen enough to know how they usually operate and he captures the feel of them with spot-on accuracy. And when he does deviate from it, it is to serve a purpose. For instance, when George is first introduced to the talkies, he dismisses them as a fad and goes to his dressing room. However, in one of the best parts of the movie, he soon starts to notice that everything is making a sound...very loud sounds. He becomes overwhelmed by his surroundings before waking up from a dream, a metaphorical dream that is a sign of things to come.

The main focus is on George himself. He is, as the title implies, an artist. While he enjoys the fame and fortune, he above all loves working in movies. When talkies become the norm, he resists by making his own silent film. It flops and he is soon forced into bankruptcy. He sells off most of his possessions, but keeps his old film reels that remind him of his glory days (though they soon drive him close to madness). While it is not really explained why he does not attempt to breaking into talking pictures even when it is clear that they are the way of the future, it is implied that he is not comfortable with this new technique and that he does not want to compromise his abilities as a performer for the sake of connivence. So even though he can be pretty self-centered, prone to pity his own misfortunes, and not quick to adapt to his changing environment, you do care for him as a character because he ultimately has a heart and love for his work. A lot of credit goes to Dujardin, who has the looks and expressions of a true silent actor. The rest of the cast includes Bejo also preforms well, as does the rest of the cast, which includes minor roles by well known actors (John Goodman, James Cromwell, etc.) and a dog named Uggie (as played by Uggie). They all allow the film to flow at a good paste. While I admit that the second half is more a little more melodramatic than the first, it still has some uplifting moments. I also enjoyed the ending (which I will obviously not spoil).

So that is "The Artist." A short review, I know, but there is really not much more that need to be said. It is not the most complex film in the history and is pretty old fashion. Seriously, it is a black and white, silent picture! I am not even sure if you can get more old fashioned than this; that is virtually impossible for a full-length movie! But that is kind of the point. It is supposed to a simple, straightforward movie that mimics the bygone era it portrays and a man who must learn to find his place in life. And on that level, it succeeds splendidly.

I recommend it.

This review is dedicated to the last surviving silent film actors/actresses as of this writing, which include Carla Laemmle and Mickey Rooney.

Stay tuned for Oscar predictions, coming this week!

REVIEW: Red State (2011)

Hey guys, ready for an awful Kevin Smith movie that besmirches everything good he’s ever put to his name? I’m not, but I’m going to do the review anyway. This is Red State.

Director: Kevin Smith

Starring: John Goodman and who cares?

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0873886/

You know, people should just stick to what they do best. You wouldn’t ask a baker to write you an award winning novel and you wouldn’t ask a novelist to bake a cake for your wedding. The same principle even applies to movie directors who try and step outside what they’re usually known for. Kevin Smith, for example, is a comedy director. He makes quirky off the wall comedies about larger than life subjects with a lot of style and wit. Here, he has created a god-awful ‘horror’ film with nothing resembling his usual awesomeness at all. And alright, I’m all for people branching out every once in a while, but for Pete’s sake at least try harder than Smith did here!

So the film starts off with some home video quality directing as we see one of our main douchebags riding in the car with a woman who I presume is his mom, although really they look about the same age. They pass by some fanatical church protesters angry at gay people, and then he goes to school where his teacher is so cool that she says curse words in class and uses colloquialisms because that’s what Kevin Smith thinks happens in all schools…then at lunch the douchebag meets up with other douchebags who are totally different! Actually…no they’re not.

That's the smart thing to do! Why don't you just paint a big target on your chest while you're at it?

They talk about sex, use a lot of vulgar language and make plans to meet up with some random woman on the internet for sex that night, because that’s the only way they’ll ever be real men and have memorable times in high school. Wow. So is there…anything likable about them? Is there anything that doesn’t make me want to stab them all through the jugulars multiple times over? No? Okay then.

I know what you’re thinking here: doesn’t every Kevin Smith movie have characters that act like total jackasses and talk about sex in rambling monologues? How is this movie any different? Well, where Clerks used that kind of dialogue for humorous purposes and backed it up with strong acting and directing, here it’s just like Smith didn’t even give a crap. It’s got no style to it. This is just random, tasteless nonsense. There’s nothing funny or interesting about it and it certainly doesn’t draw us into the characters, so why? I guess it’s “realistic” in some fashion, but even that’s a stretch to say. Realism only goes so far until it starts to actually detract from the film.

So our three cancerous blobs sneak out and go to a trailer in the middle of nowhere where an ugly middle aged woman answers the door with a bottle of cheap beer in her hand; isn’t this sounding sort of like a really awful Superbad rip off right now? This whole opening is kind of like that – like if Superbad took itself really seriously. And I don’t think anyone ever really wanted to see that, Kevin Smith!

The picture of romance.

But never fear, because Smith does change it up afterwards by introducing the plot twist that the whole online sex thing was really a scam; shock and awe…the kids are kidnapped by this cult of religious nutbags led by Michael Parks, who…was in some movies, I guess. And I mean this character is just asinine to the extreme. It wouldn’t be so bad if what he was saying was cut down to just a minute or two, but Smith keeps the camera on him for like 15 minutes while he just rambles on and on and on about how homosexuals are bad and whatever else. Pretty much you can just sum it up as “Blah blah blah blah blah…” There’s nothing of any worth here.

Easily the most annoying character I've seen in a while, and I watched REPO a few weeks ago.

And you’re tired of this after like the first 2 minutes. WE GET IT. Kevin Smith is making a commentary about the Westboro Baptist Church and other fanatical religious sects; it’s not like he’s saying anything controversial here! So why all the babbling? Why are you making us sit through this torture, Kevin Smith?

So there’s also this other plot thread about how the sheriff of the county is having a gay love affair with some random guy and hiding it from his wife. How riveting. Why don’t you actually show us something interesting or relevant next time? This is all just a set up anyway to get the deputy guy to go over to the cult church place and do the whole cliché ‘cop comes within an inch of finding out the bad guys but is too dumb to put the pieces together.’

"Duhhhhrrrr, don't make me think; I just came from a baked yams and honey and Bud Light and cowboy hat rodeo!"

Shame on you Kevin Smith…shame on you.

So yeah, as you can gather, there has so far been nothing in this movie that even merits a light hearted joke or jab. Which is sad. But don’t worry, we have some real raising the stakes moments coming up! Like when the church people kill a guy by tying him to a cross and putting a bullet through his head…

…and when they kill the cop who comes to visit even though that will CLEARLY, OBVIOUSLY cause problems. That’s great. You know, if these people are so gun happy, how have they even survived this long? I also love how when one of them gets killed by the hostage kid that escapes, the old lady who we first met starts freaking out and acting like it’s a Shakespearean tragedy. Because, you know, bad things usually never happen when you take people hostage and try to kill them. THAT’S JUST PREPOSTEROUS!

Also the sheriff can’t mobilize his forces because Our Lord and Master Michael Parks blackmails him about being gay! Good law enforcement? What’s that?!

Oh boo hoo, you whiny little jackass. Grow a pair.

Oh, and because this movie has absolutely no idea what it’s doing, it actually hid a John Goodman performance way far back into its recesses. Wouldn’t one good actor be the thing you want to focus on, Kevin Smith? I know you like being edgy and off-kilter but…seriously. It’s John Goodman! He plays a cop who is under pressure from the bureaucracy to…be bureaucratic more often, I guess. They go to the crazy cult church and the crazy people start a shootout with them! Because again, they’ve somehow survived this long without blowing themselves up and I guess they were just tired of NOT being blown up.

Then as if the movie wasn’t insulting enough, we get one of the younger girls freeing the only main character left and trying to force him to help her save her younger cousins. Yeah, because I’m really gonna have sympathy for any of these wretched characters now; that’s a laugh. Of course the main character actually agrees, which is one of the only things I liked at all in this. This plot thread could have worked, but never underestimate Red State’s mediocrity as both characters literally get killed off in their next scene. Yes, really.

Having plots that go somewhere is tough I guess

Hey, taking this movie too seriously? It’s OK, we have a scene where Michael Parks asks that crazy fake-prostitute lady to get him tea during a big battle scene. Hooray for incompetence!

Ugh, alright, I am just about sick of this…the movie ends with the government putting Michael Parks in jail and putting John Goodman in another department different from the one he’s in now. I really can’t even bother to talk about this one anymore; it’s just that bad.

Red State is total ass, and I can safely say that Kevin Smith has been caught red handed with this one as there just isn’t any quality to be found. Every plot thread brought up is quickly dismissed for no reason and without any fanfare, like the movie just couldn’t wait to shoot itself in the foot again and again and again, like a suicidal Looney Tunes character that won’t bleed out no matter how many times the gun sounds off. It's preachy as hell, too, and doesn't have anything really interesting to say on top of that. Yeah, religious fanaticism is BAD. Did you know that?!

The characters are awful…they really expect us to care one wink about any of these horrible, horrible people? Are we supposed to root for the idiotic dolts who tried to solicit sex over the internet, or the ridiculously heinous church cult members who are about as likable as dried up gum on the bottom of my shoe? The acting is Z-grade garbage, the writing is bland at best, the directing is an immature drunken mess…where’s the quality? Where the hell is anything in this movie that I can enjoy even one little bit? John Goodman is pretty good, but then, they don’t even use him to his full potential. What would Jay and Silent Bob have to say about this?

I thought so. Case closed.